


Sweet Potato Songpyeon

by Ninjaninaiii



Series: Hanabatake [2]
Category: Star Trek: Beyond - Fandom
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family Drama, First Dates, Flowers, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 13:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7620589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninjaninaiii/pseuds/Ninjaninaiii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuseok: the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving. Complete with family drama, food and generous amounts of love. A sequel to "Come With Me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Potato Songpyeon

**Author's Note:**

> I hc everyone asexual, but I wrote this fic to be deliberately ambiguous. What you would like to imagine happens after the casual fades to black is up to you. <3
> 
> Thank you to everyone who wrote a comment on the last fic, asking for a sequel <3

They were heading to Yorktown to reprovision and had been warned that services had been slow recently. They had been told to plan for a two-week layover. Sulu couldn’t wait. 

He was met at the airport by a streak of grey, wrapping itself around his neck. He beamed, spinning to match her momentum. “Hey baby.” 

Kim took a deep sniff of his hair, nosing his scalp as she did so. “You don’t smell like smoke!”

“Absolutely zero crashes,” he confirmed. The (newest) Enterprise had survived its third journey into the unknown. 

“Nearly,” Kirk laughed, coming to shake hands with Ben, who kept a careful animosity towards the Captain. “When Chekov brought up my birthday party and you swerved at the mention of nipple-clamps—” Kirk’s grin only strengthened as his hand drained of colour, gripped as it was by Ben, who had gone a flushed red. Kirk raised his hand to his mouth as he stage-whispered to Ben. “Took two weeks to find a planet that could fix the hull.” He was released from Ben’s grip. “Enjoy your leave, Sulu!” Kirk was swallowed by the reds, blues and yellows of Enterprise crew.

Hikaru saw in Ben’s eye that even if, by some miracle, Kim had not absorbed the phrase into her lexicon, Hikaru would never hear the end of it.

“Kim!” he said, as a distraction. He set her down, taking her in. She swished in her uniform, a heather grey tunic over puffy, knee-length shorts. “How was your first week of school, did you like it?” 

Hikaru had had a pang of regret when Ben had told him Kim had had to have supplementary lessons before joining the school in Yorktown. Unlike back at home, Yorktown catered to an unending list of species, and though most at her new school were human, there was a standard of education she had not met when arriving at base.

Kim was too young to understand why she had been set apart, not allowed to join her new classmates, but, to Hikaru’s relief, she did not seem adversely affected. “You know how in my old school, we had to sit at desks and learn like that because that was how they’ve always done it and even though it was really, really boring, we had to do it anyway?” she asked, in her rambling, child’s way. Hikaru nodded, remembering feeling exactly as she had. “Well here, we sit sometimes outside, near the river, and teacher will read to us while we sit in a circle, and if we want, we can run around, and at first, you run around a lot and a lot, but then it’s more fun sometimes to listen, and sometimes it’s so fun you don’t even want to run, you just want to listen.”

“Wow,” Hikaru said, his face bright. He’d missed this, listening to her ramble. 

“Kim, tell Papa about your project.”

“Which one?” she asked, her head tilting.

“Your favourite colour,” Ben prompted. It was entertaining to see how a child valued each project the same, where an adult might place importance on one over the other.

“Oh, right, teacher said we had to make a show and tell about our favourite colour and at first I was going to pick your yellow,” she said, tapping at Hikaru’s spotless shirt, “But then I didn’t know what to say about it, and everyone knows you’re a hero anyway because you’re on the Enterprise and you’re a pilot,” she said, almost in one breath. 

Hikaru blinked. He was flattered, and a little embarrassed, at the suggestion that so many of his daughter’s friends knew who he was.

“So instead I picked green.”

Hikaru’s eyes leapt to Ben, who was trying to conceal a smile. “Why green, baby?” he asked, feeling like he’d missed something.

“Because,” she said, like he was an idiot. “Daddy’s fingers are always green, and more people need to know that Daddy is a hero too, even though he doesn’t have posters and toys with his face on.” 

Hikaru felt himself mist up a little, proud of his girl for inheriting his instinct to protect Ben’s non-existent ego. “You’re right,” he told her. “When did you get to be so smart?”

“Well,” Kim said, “That, and Daddy was hiding the shirt he stole from your suitcase and I didn’t want to get in trouble.” 

Hikaru  _ had  _ been missing one of his shirts, but he’d just assumed he’d left it in the dryer, like Ben had told him he would. He patted Kim’s hair. “Good girl, Kim.” He was trying to control his smile, knowing without looking that Ben was a bright pink.

-

Finding a babysitter was hard. While Ben had extensive lists of trustworthy friends and acquaintances he made use of during the week, Hikaru had also been made to promise the crew of the Enterprise a turn with the kid, all fancying themselves the greatest uncle. 

Kirk had tried his best. He was a great story-teller, and had plenty of first-hand adventures to pull from. The only problem was that when Kim had asked him to continue a story, he had done so with vigour, instilling within her a deep-seated fear of what lurked in the dark. She had had nightmares for over a month, and Kirk had felt so guilty, he’d begged not to be allowed near her again.

They had arrived to Chekov’s apartment to find his kitchen swimming in food dye and sugar. Kim had shown them a photo as they’d closed the door on the mess, leaving the Russian to stare about himself, looking lost, his eyes wide and jittery. “It took us all day but we made rainbow pancakes,” she said, grinning. The sugar-high had lasted for more than 24 hours.

Scotty had made her watch his favourite films, all several centuries old, and she had denied going back. “It’s torture, Papa,” she said, and Hikaru had had to agree.

Uhura had taught Kim the basics of three language systems, which Ben had then had to teach himself lest Kim was saying something inappropriate in his ignorance. Not wanting to tether his daughter with a translation device, Ben had said he’d never studied anything so arduously as he had in those months.

Spock — They’d asked him once. They’d never asked him again.

Bones stood in his rented apartment in a pair of loungers and a faded t-shirt. “Hey kid, I’m McCoy.” He frowned. “Leonard. Leo.” Hikaru raised an eyebrow, watching Bones have what looked to be a minor identity crisis. “You can call me Bones.”

“Bones is a weird name.” Kim held out her hand, which Bones shook. 

“Tell me about it,” Bones said in his usual grumble.  

“Try not to get into uncle’s way, okay, baby?” Hikaru kissed Kim’s forehead. “Uncle Bones has a very bad temper.” 

“Damn it, Sulu—” 

Hikaru half-grimaced, leaning away from Ben. Bones turned to Ben, who glanced at Kim, who looked back, innocent and unaware. Ben’s eyes were chilling as Bones met his gaze.  _ Right _ , Bones looked like he was trying to say.  _ Rein in the damnations.  _

“Darn it Sulu—” Ben’s eyes ceased raining fire. “You’ll scare the kid.”

“I’m hungry,” she said, not sensing the war going on above her head.

The smell of food, just on the cusp of burning, wafted from the kitchen. “Dam—” Bones froze. His gaze flicked to Ben, who was giving him a sharp look. “Damask. It’s a type of rose. You ever seen it?” he asked Kim, who shook her head. 

“My daddy is a florist though.” She looked to Ben. “Do you know what a damask rose is?”

“It’s those pink ones we get sometimes, with loads and loads of petals. You said it reminded you of a tutu.”

“Oh!” Kim’s eyes lit up. “I do know,” she told Bones. Ben’s panicked brow had gone a little softer around the eyes. “I think our food is burning, uncle Bones.”

Bones pushed the Sulu husbands out of his house, slammed the door, then ran to save their dinner.  _ Damask _ , he said to himself.  _ Damask, damask, damask _ — 

-

Hikaru ordered the most expensive item on the menu. It was an unsurprisingly small plate, custom-made to accommodate three phosphorescent shells in the centre. They were, the waiter told them, fresh from the bottom of the bottomless sea on a planet nearby. Hikaru and Ben shrugged off the paradox, assuming it was a mistranslation from the glowing translator by the waiter’s neck.

Like snails from earth, the meat seemed to hold little flavour itself and so were lathered in some kind of sauce that tasted, Hikaru said, like eating a dandelion, his tastebuds warning him that they detected danger and urging him to spit. Ben had nodded at the comparison. Dandelion stems, they agreed. They swapped stories of boyhood adventures in summer fields as they fought over who had to eat the last one. 

“So,” Sulu said, tipsy and pressing Ben against their hotel room’s wall. “You stole my shirt.”

“Kim is too observant,” Ben said, steadfastly ignoring the implication. “You need to be careful, Hikaru, she  _ knows _ things.”

“Did you wear it?”

“No!” Ben said, just too quickly not to be a lie. “No, I just— it’s soft, and it smells like you.” 

“You wear my t-shirts,” Hikaru countered.

“No, you wear  _ my  _ t-shirts, which I then reclaim. It’s different.” Ben was focusing very intently on the wall opposite. “...It’s hot when you do it,” he admitted, in a quiet voice. “The boyfriend shirt thing.”

“Good.” Hikaru smoothed his hands against Ben’s waist, loving the familiarity of the movement. “But?” he asked, sensing the addendum. 

“It’s hot, but, when you leave, it’s like you take everything with you,” Ben said in a rush. “You wear my shirts, which is hot while you’re here, but you leave them behind because they’re mine.” Ben brought his hands up Hikaru’s back, pulling him closer. “But your yellow shirt… it’s… you.”

Hikaru felt the tension within him so he forced it out, relaxing. He rested his chin on Ben’s shoulder. “I miss you too.” 

He felt Ben turn his head to kiss Hikaru’s ear. Then a memory bubbled and Hikaru laughed. “Is this because I took your t-shirt on my first mission?”

He felt Ben still. “I knew it was you.” Ben’s grip turned from loving to mock-outraged. “You told me you hadn’t touched it and I  _ believed  _ you,” Ben growled. It had been Ben’s favourite t-shirt, and black, the same colour as his uniform’s undershirt. If he was particularly lonely, Hikaru had worn it and nobody had suspected anything. 

Then Hikaru had ripped it in a fight with an alien and thrown the tattered evidence into space. ...Ben didn’t have to know that. He hid his guilt with a kiss to Ben’s upper lip. “You’re hiding something,” Ben said, though he returned the kisses. “Does this mean you still have it? I love that shirt—” Hikaru deepened the kiss to hush him. 

-

When Sulu had gone on his first long-term mission, he hadn’t realised how much he would miss home. Some part of him, on joining Starfleet, had been prepared to take longer, more adventurous missions because, he had been told, your ship became your home, your crew your family. 

Only, in the years it had taken for him to graduate and rise through Starfleet’s ranks, he’d become a husband and the sensation of missing Ben sat over every discovery they made, every mission they cleared.

He hadn’t even made it to bridge, nor was he a reserve pilot. He’d only managed to get the commission as a botanist, taking the mission for ‘experience’ so that next time he had an interview, he could say how well he’d fared abroad, in action, how he’d dealt with stress under pressure.

He hadn’t minded so much when, on a planet they’d been making peace treaties with, a native species presented his crew with a bouquet of local plants. They were breathtaking, and there were hundreds of them, a bouquet for every member of the crew. 

Once the botanists had cannibalised their own gifts as specimen collections, drying some and wet preserving others to make sure the flowers had no adverse effects on humans, Sulu managed to escape to his room with a smaller, but still incredible, selection. He’d tried to keep as many unidentified plants as he could, trading some of his for some from the rest of the crew.

He stood with his hands on his hips as he stared at the selection of plants, scattered across his desk. He had no idea how he was going to keep them alive. Two months until he was home after ten away from Ben.

It was like taking care of a baby. Incessant feeding, watering, tending, Hikaru’s paternal instincts took over his mind, directing him to his room to check on the flowers every time he had a break from work.

His bunkmate had stolen one, once, to give to his partner, and Hikaru had nearly broken the man’s nose. 

A small part of him wondered if this were not an effect of the flowers; some kind of pollen that infected those in close proximity after the stem had been cut, rewiring the brain to set the plants as a high priority. He watched the other botanists, checking to see whether they also coveted their plants, but Hikaru was (half) relieved to find his undue attention was a product of his own familial care, not some plant-given attack on the brain.

A week before home, an enemy attack drilled a hole through their heating systems, causing sporadic spikes between furnace hot and ice cold. The worst situation for plants. He’d run with the vase from his bunk to the labs, trying to ignore how the sweat he’d worked up not three seconds ago was quickly freezing into ice down his back. 

“Sulu?” Hikaru’s commanding officer asked, “Are those plants from Arwettem B?” 

Hikaru nodded.

“You’ve been keeping them alive?”

Hikaru nodded.

The commanding officer whistled, impressed, her hands crossed against her chest. “There’s an open bio-pod in lab three you can use to monitor temperature.” 

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Two of the flowers died. Hikaru felt like he was holding a funeral as he dry-froze them, keeping them in a square of material Ben had wrapped his leaving present in. A framed photo of them cutting their wedding cake. He kept the wrapped flowers by the photo.

-

“What  _ are _ those?” Ben had asked, in a voice that made Hikaru’s chest flutter. “They’re still alive?” 

“Kept them alive for two months,” Hikaru said, voice proud. “Thought you might be able to find some similar plants and do some grafting…” 

Ben’s hug made every second of the near-threat of hypothermia, the near dismissal for assaulting another officer, and the thoughts of alien plant manipulation worth it. “They’re incredible,” Ben said. “Thank you.” 

-

Yuki was fifteen when Hikaru was born. An older sister that had left the house by the time Hikaru could form lasting memories. She was part of some mission in deep space, never had time to send more than a quick notice that she was still alive every year or so. 

Aiko was only three years younger than Hikaru, and they had grown up as two brothers in competition with one-another did: at first, childish fighting over their parents’ affection. Then, an alliance, rebellion against their parents’ wishes. Then maturity, a difference in interests, a slow drift apart taking Aiko closer to his parents’ wishes and Hikaru further into space.

Aiko had taken over the family business a couple of years back, their parents ‘retiring’ in such a way that they still went to work every day but gave Aiko the ability to put some power behind his name. Strangely, in doing so, it was like Aiko and Hikaru had cleared the final hurdle of their relationship, seeing the rocky semi-hatred return to a mutual respect. Plus, Aiko had said once, while quite pissed, having the best darn pilot in the Federation for a brother was a real good pick-up line. 

Ben and Aiko had only met a handful of times, but they had meshed well, talking about business, stocks, home-world politics. Hikaru had watched, fondly, glad they looked like brothers catching up over a pint in a bar. Hikaru didn’t understand anything they said, but he enjoyed feeling like he had a family again, for however short amount of time. 

-

The evening of Hikaru’s second night back in Yorktown, he got a phonecall, pulling him away from the dinner table. “Hey, stranger.”

“How’re you doing, fly-boy?” Aiko had started to use their childhood nicknames recently, and it made Hikaru’s heart swell. 

“Not too bad. Didn’t crash anything this time,” he said, anticipating Aiko’s next question. From behind him, Kim yelled ‘nearly!, and Aiko chuckled, a small, barely-there sound. “What about you?”

“Yeah, same old…” Hikaru waited for the reason behind the rare phone call. “Ben told me you have a couple of weeks off?” Aiko said, forcing his voice into neutrality.

Ben and Aiko talked? He smiled. “Sure, we’re reprovisioning, but progress is slow.” 

“I wanted to come and see you, but work doesn’t let even the CEO take time off and…” Aiko trailed off, finding himself unable to keep up the pretense. “Mum and dad wanted to see you… and Kim, and Ben, if they wanted to come, too.” 

Dread. Confusion. A small twinge of hope, smothered by another wave of dread. He turned to Ben, who came to stand behind him, a hand on the small of Hikaru’s back. “They want to meet you.” 

Ben understood. “When?”

“Whenever you’re free,” Aiko answered. “Over the weekend?” Earth was a couple of days away on an express route. There and back would take a week. A week of Hikaru’s long-anticipated leave. 

“Has something happened to them?” Ben’s voice was pragmatic. 

“No…” Aiko paused. “They’re not ill or anything I think they’re just… getting older. Yuki is god knows where, I don’t have kids, and you’re…” Another pause. “I’ve been talking to them. They’re… Better. Or, they…” Aiko sighed. It was more difficult than that. “They just want to see you.”

Hikaru watched Kim, who was attempting to shove the peppers on her plate onto Hikaru’s while her dads weren’t watching. She’d never met her grandparents. Hikaru had never wanted her to meet his parents, and Ben’s were dead.

Hikaru wondered if Aiko thought he was going to have said no and hung up. It had been his first thought. “We’ll think about it,” was his best response. “I’ll let you know in the morning?” 

Aiko let out a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay. Talk tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Aiko. For trying.”

“Yeah. ...Night.” The click of the disconnection. 

Hikaru pocketed his phone, leaning against the table in the hall. Ben put a hand on Hikaru’s forearm. Hikaru sighed. “I don’t know.” 

“Best case scenario? Worst case? Probable?”

“Best case, they apologise for everything, dad shakes your hand, we never see them again. Worst, they try to brainwash Kim to be their spy and they move to Yorktown. Probable, we sit around, awkwardly not having arguments, hoping the holiday can be over so we can send christmas cards and birthday presents without ever having to see them again.”

“And if they’ve really changed?” Ben kept his tone carefully disbelieving. Too much neutrality would effectively amount to siding with his parents. Ben sighed when Hikaru remained non-responsive, pulling him into a hug.

He smiled when another pair of arms, much smaller, wrapped around their waists, pulling them together. “What’s wrong?” Kim asked, staring up at them. ”Are you hurting?”

Hikaru laughed, wiping a hand against his face to get rid of the frustrated tears. “Do you want to visit grandma and grandpa?”

Kim looked at Ben. “ _ Seongmyo _ ?” Visiting the ancestral graves. 

Hikaru laughed again, though this time, self-deprecating. “No, baby, your living ones.” 

Kim frowned. “No  _ beolcho _ ?” Cleaning and weeding the graves. 

Hikaru crouched so he was at eye-level with her. “Kim, I know I don’t talk about my parents very much, but do you think you wish you knew them?”

Kim thought about it. “Not really.” Hikaru half-smiled. It was hard to make someone make a decision for you.

“What about Earth, do you miss it?”

Again, Kim thought. She shrugged. “Kinda.”

Ben brought up their calendar, swiping to the next week. “It’s Chuseok next week,” he said, repressing the sudden understanding he felt. 

Hikaru’s parents would’ve known that, known it would be easier to convince them to return to Earth to celebrate the harvest festival with them. It was a time for people to pay respect to their ancestors, leaving the city to visit their ancestral home-town. 

In many ways, the journey to Earth would be what had only been a two-hour car ride for Ben a decade ago.

“Do we get to eat yakgwa ? I don’t mind beolcho if daddy cooks yakgwa and japchae and— Daddy if we go can I help you make songpyeon ?” Her mind busy cooking up a feast, Kim’s attention returned to Hikaru. “If we’re seeing your mummy and daddy too does that mean we’re gonna go to Japan? Are we going to Tsukimi? Will Aiko-ojisan make us dango?” Hikaru, Kim decided, took too long to say no, which meant yes. “I want sweet potato in my songpyeon.” 

-

“Goguma, goguma, goguma,  _ goguma… _ ” 

Hikaru glanced at his mother’s face in the rear-view mirror, watching her strain to keep a thin smile from slipping. Between himself and Ben in the back seat, Kim had been repeating the word to her own tune for the best part of the last hour of their trip. Hikaru’s parents were not used to childish behaviour, but were attempting to be on good terms; strictly avoiding giving him and Ben anything that could be construed as parenting advice. 

Yoshiko glanced in the mirror and caught Hikaru’s eye. Her smile strained further. 

“ _ Goguma _ , goguma,  _ goguma _ , goguma…” 

“Kim,” Yoshiko asked, as if she were addressing an associate at a meeting, about to ask what she would suggest they do about adjusting for inflation, or how to meet the next month’s deadlines. “What is that you’re singing?”

Kim stopped her song and her sudden silence was incredible, revealing the real tension in the car. “Goguma?” she asked, as if she wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical.

“Yes,” asked Hikaru’s fluent-in-Korean mother, “What does it mean?”

Kim looked at her dads in turn, as if wondering if her grandma was stupid, or if she had just misunderstood the question. “Sweet potato.” 

“And why are you singing the song?” Hikaru could hear how forced Yoshiko had become in attempting to be polite.

“Because we’re gonna make goguma songpyeon to take when we go to clean the graves?”

“And that… necessitates a song?”

“What does necessitates mean?” Kim passed the tripping letter with flying colours.

“Requires,” Yoshiko said.

Kim turned to Ben, still confused. “Needs.”

“Oh.” Kim nodded at her grandmother. “Uhuh.”

Hikaru had a flash of his own childhood. Replying to his mother had be a ‘yes, please’ or ‘no, thank you’ affair. He couldn’t even imagine an ‘uhuh’ being uttered by himself or Aiko. 

“Well,” Yoshiko said, after she realised that was all Kim had to say on the matter, “You’re certainly a good singer.”

“Thank you,” Kim said, blessedly remembering her manners. “Daddy says I take after papa.”

Hikaru re-met his mother’s eye in the mirror. Her gaze flicked to Ben. “I didn’t know you could sing, Ben. What register?”

“Ah, no,” Ben waved his hand, trying to deflect her gaze. “No, I’m daddy, Hikaru is papa.”

“Papa said he used to be in musicals,” Kim said, proudly. “But oh, wait, you’re papa’s mama, so you know that, woops.”

Hikaru smiled at Kim to avoid looking back at the mirror, where he knew his mother’s gaze waited.

“So you’d like to be in musicals?” Yoshiko asked. There was a touch less ice in the sharpness of her voice, as if working through the smalltalk was thawing it through. 

“Uhuh, maybe,” Kim said. “Or maybe a botanist ‘cos then I’d be like both papa  _ and  _ daddy, but also maybe a firefighter because I like red, or a pilot ‘cos then I could beat papa’s records and be the best pilot in the Federation ever, except then daddy would get extra,  _ extra  _ lonely ‘cos both me  _ and  _ papa would be  _ all—”  _ she paused to elongate the word, going until she ran out of breath— “The way in space, and he’d be all—” another pause, another breath, “—the way in Yorktown.”  

Hikaru found Ben was focused out of the car window, eyes trailing the horizon. So this was a conversation they had had before, then. 

“Well,” Yoshiko said, eventually. “Whatever you choose, I’m sure you’ll excell at it, with parents like yours.”

Compliment. Boast. They blurred into one in Hikaru’s mind. Kim’s successes were Hikaru’s, which were Yoshiko’s. Her clever little grandchild, created by her clever little son, created by her. 

He slumped against his own car door, finding the horizon and following it. In the silence, Kim continued her song.

-

Ben Seuk was sixteen when his parents had died. They were civilians, had never left Earth. His mother had been half-Japanese, but both had lived in Korea until they’d died in a car crash that was no-one’s fault but the rain’s. 

Ben left school and started to travel, going first to America on a cultural-exchange trip that did not necessitate student status. It was meant for people thinking about joining Starfleet, especially those from countries where Academies weren’t as prevalent. 

He considered it for a long while as he learnt English. He dreamt about joining, becoming something of a star in the Academy for a talent he didn’t know he had, as a pilot, or a translator, or an engineer. He thought about flying to distant galaxies with nothing tying him to Earth, just going and never coming back.

It wasn’t guilt that made him think of his parents’ burial mounds, nor any kind of duty, but he liked Earth. He liked its familiarity, its feel, and he had no burning desire to jump ship any time soon. Decided, he deleted the bookmarked application for Starfleet and started to look for jobs. 

With Korea only an hour journey away, he decided on San Francisco as his temporary home, taking a couple of part-time jobs in shops a week. When he was eighteen, he was fluent in English and felt like one of the city’s people. He considered naturalisation. If he joined Starfleet and could prove honourable duty, he’d be applicable. Or he could wait a year and marry someone. Or, he thought, three more years of being a decent citizen. He could do that, while also looking for a husband.

His ‘search’ for a husband became a sort of personal joke, making him laugh every now and then as he’d chat with a customer, wondering if they knew it was easier to marry an alien than it was to become a US citizen. On some planets, Ben could be the newlywed husband of a species that resembled an Earth bee quicker than he could have a blue passport swapped for his green one. 

He was working in a well-paying, high-end clothes outlet when some of the more enthusiastic members of staff begun wearing off on him, taking him to bars, making him a fake license when they realised he was still legally unable to buy alcohol, setting him up with their friends, asking if he’d done any drugs. He hadn’t, and he was curious. He was young, so he drank, and he liked his new friends.

Ben had always looked older than he was. His parents had laughed at his childhood maturity, saying he’d absorbed all of his mother’s age while he’d been in the womb, leaving her young and carefree while he’d been the kind of sober, quiet child that made others bored by his company. By the time he was eighteen, he was being mistaken for café regulars ten years his senior (which, he thought, was nothing to complain about; it usually meant he got his breakfast for free.)

He never felt like he was giving into peer-pressure, never felt coerced into a lifestyle he hadn’t chosen. He liked how the alcohol made him talkative, and how his friends had stopped telling him to ‘lighten up’. He was a long way from home.

His hangovers were never intolerable, but he was fired after a year, having shown up to work late only to throw up on a box of stock in the back room. Before digging his head in the sand, filled with shame, a friend passed on the name of a local lady hiring for her shop. A bit out of the way, not as central as this job, but she paid well, and was a nice person.

That was how he found himself a florist, soon-to-be twenty and living above the shop with his friend’s friend, who, it turned out, was the aunt of Ben’s last-but-one boyfriend. He found that being a florist agreed with him, on some level. Unlike the soul-destroying repetitiveness of scanning replaceable shirt with replaceable shirt, (most) people thought about the flowers they were buying, thought about the person they were buying it for. 

He liked his new aunty, too, a fifty-something Korean lady who taught him how to cook songpyeon and bulgogi. The flowershop had once been a three-bedroom house until she’d knocked a hole through the living-room and posted buckets of bouquets in the doorway next to chalkboards that told people to pay what they wanted. Her partner had left her, and she wanted to make someone else’s happy.

One morning, six months into the job, Ben was hosing down the pavement when a Starfleet student ran past, skidded on the wet concrete, corrected himself in the nick of time with a lunge and continued running without sparing a second to look back. Ben tried to shout that he was sorry for nearly flooring the guy, but he’d already rounded the corner. 

He watched the street through the window that day, waiting for the chance to apologise. Bizarrely, he felt he needed to clear his name, though he had no doubt the student had spent less than a second thinking about the event since it had happened. He looked like he’d been in a rush, and it would probably appear in a conversation with his friends as part of a tally of bad luck:  _ ‘and of course some idiot thought today was a good day to wash the pavements so I nearly trip, and…’  _

Ben was closing up when the student walked back up the street towards the student dorms, nodding to whatever music he was listening to. Ben had planned what he was going to say, it had circulated his head as if he’d needed to memorise a speech but, when he saw the man pass, head bobbing to the beat, the script didn’t seem important. The man looked happy, which was good. Whatever he’d been rushing for this morning, he must have got it. Not wanting to interrupt the man’s good mood, he packed down the display from the front and got to work transporting flowers inside.

The student had had nice legs. Ben let himself smile at the thought. Starfleet must make you do exercise but the man looked like he  _ did  _ a sport. His reactions to the water had been pretty quick too, with that lunge. Soccer? A martial art? Gymnastics? 

He tried to imagine the student in the uniforms of each, and found he could very easily do so. Maybe he did a variety of sports. He looked like he probably could; he looked cool, and suave, and sporty. He wondered what the man was studying to be. Probably wanted to be a Captain, some day. He found himself wishing the student good-luck, as if his well-wishes might help the stranger get a good mark, or land him an opportunity he might not have gotten otherwise.

Then he put the stranger out of his mind and got to work preparing dinner. Aunty had gone to the market that morning and had brought back some interesting plants, fresh from a ship that had been on some planet on the other side of the universe. 

He pulled out a bunch of long, golden stalks, crisp to the touch. Cutting into it released the tang of raw garlic, but fresher, more like garlic scapes than cloves of the bulb. Kimchi, he thought, and begun to assemble the rest of the ingredients, choosing to put a couple of leafs of an almost cabbage-y vegetable in for good measure. It was pink, like cotton-candy, but it made the squeak that cabbage did when cut, and tasted just as bland. Pink and gold kimchi. He hummed as he cooked. What was the world coming to.

-

Ben realised his mistake the next day as he was trimming the stalks off some roses meant for an anniversary present. He’d caught sight of the student walking past the window and guessed that this must be the way the student took to the Academy each day.  Then, Ben had remembered that not twelve hours ago, he had imagined the guy in several different uniforms, and that that constituted  _ fantasising _ , and that he hadn’t even registered that that was incredibly  _ bad _ , because all he knew was that the man walked in the vague direction of Starfleet at certain points of the day, and that if he really was going to spend the next few months harbouring a crush on a literal stranger, he was in a prime position to know  _ exactly what time he walked past a certain place, which was definitely stalking and— _

He snipped a little too hard and nearly took the top off of his finger. He swallowed. He just… he just had to ignore the guy. He made note of the time, a little past eight in the morning, and decided that he would work out-back at the same time tomorrow. When the man walked back in the evening, he made a note of that time, too. This wasn’t stalkerish, he told himself, like a man in front of a damning jury. This was the epitome of anti-stalkerish. He was preventing himself from abusing the man’s ungiven consent. 

At ten past ten the next day, Ben watched in horror as the guy ran past the window, obviously late. Okay, he thought. False alarm. He was late, which could still mean his usual journey occurred at eight. His theory was confirmed when the stranger returned at nearly the exact time in the evening.

The next morning, the man had strolled past, casual, at nine-twenty. So, not a false alarm. Or maybe he had different classes on each day? The stranger returned at the same time in the evening.

A fault was slowly making itself obvious to Ben. To avoid the man was slowly becoming a catalogue of scrawled notes on his computer, which looked remarkably like the scratchings of a man in a frenzy. When the police raided his house and found the detailed accounts of the man’s comings and goings, what would they do? Was that not evidence of his crimes? Was he planning on committing a crime, now? Was it a crime to find a guy attractive?

That night, he and aunty shared a microwave pizza after Ben very nearly burned the place down. He found actors attractive, he told himself. If he just ignored the man enough, soon he’d be part of the scenery. He wouldn’t try ignoring him, he wouldn’t try calling out to him, he’d just treat him like a local.

-

It only took a year for the plan to crack. 

In reality, it had been cracking  _ for  _ a year, but Ben wanted to at least pretend to his inner self that he had tried his hardest to ignore the handsome stranger. He had gone for months without thinking about the man, would only register him with a vague ‘oh, there he is, off to study’. 

Ben had finally thought he’d gotten over his crush when it got to about three in the afternoon, and he realised he hadn’t seen the man walk by. Ben had made a mental check of the school calendar (something he kept up on because of graduation dates,) but, if his mental scan was correct, it would be mid-finals, and he’d always pegged the stranger as a studious guy. Sporty, but high-achieving, and willing to pull long hours at the library to make his grades as good as they could get. 

He felt a flicker of worry and quickly doused it. So the man hadn’t walked past this morning. He could be studying at home, or he could have a cold, or he could be doing  _ literally anything _ and it wasn’t Ben’s business.

In his agitation, he’d grabbed one-too many roses and, in the process of jamming it back into the bucket, he sent the others flying over his shoulder like some badly-written cartoon. He took a second to breathe in, then out. 

Okay. Thankfully, none of the flowers had been hurt by their experience. He counted them, then frowned. Twelve. He’d had one too many to start with. Dumping the flowers back in the bucket to prevent a remake of the scene he’d just created, he started his look around and focused on it just as a man was coming towards it, about to crush it— 

He dove to pick it up, hating to see a flower crushed needlessly, only meeting a hand rather than a stem— the other man jumped back, probably alarmed that Ben had just materialised at his feet to save a damned rose. 

Ben glanced up and his heart thudded. At least the stranger hadn’t been murdered in his house, never to become the soccer-playing Captain he’d been training to be. Ben stood, careful to pull up his practised façade. Treat him like a local. 

“Head in the clouds?” Ben asked, trying to inspect the rose as casually as he could.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m, finals, sorry. Did I step on it?” the stranger’s voice was nice, Ben registered. He was leaning closer, as if he actually cared about the flower’s safety. The stem had snapped, close to the head, making it useless for the bouquet.

“It’s a bit crushed, I’m sorry to say. Can’t sell it.” Ben could hear his blood thrumming through his head, beating like he’d been standing by the speakers at a gig. He licked his lips before meeting Hikaru’s eye. He held out the rose. “For you.”

_ Treat him like a local _ , Ben’s brain tried.  _ What part of handing roses to attractive guys is treating them like a local?  _ He bit his lip, hating how he knew he’d looked flushed, and suddenly conscious that he’d run his hand through his hair only a minute ago, probably leaving it sticking up at odd angles. He probably looked like a clown.

The stranger took the rose, his face unreadable. “Thank you.”

Ben nodded, deep enough that it could have been a half-bow. “I hope your studies go well,” Ben said, before high-tailing it into the shop, not looking back. Only once he closed the door did he realise he still had no clue what the stranger’s name was, and it took him ten good minutes to trawl through their conversation to remember whether the stranger  _ had  _ mentioned studying, or if Ben’s final words had sounded like the stalker he was.

He made an extensive menu of side-dishes that night, cracking out the golden-pink kimchi he and aunty had been savouring. It had turned out well, and they were onto the last dregs, having a sliver of pink cabbage with their rice on special occasions.

Neither of them really knew what they were celebrating, but aunty took any opportunity to crack out the eye-watering shōchū she’d stolen from her ex-partner, and Ben was more than happy to entertain her.

-

“For your girlfriend? Boyfriend?” Ben had heard the words leave his lips, but he still couldn’t believe how much of an idiot he was. But, he tried to reason, it was a question he asked  _ all  _ of his customers, when they asked for a bouquet of red roses. It was just the done thing. People  _ liked  _ telling him that they had partners. He was about to add gender-neutral and plural options to the question when the stranger had blurted a loud ‘no’. 

“Oh,” Ben said, before thinking  _ good _ . 

“They’re for my grandma. Ohakamairi.” 

Ben winced. And now he was back to being an asshole. Being glad that the stranger was buying flowers for a visit to his dead grandma, on new year’s? Then a pang of nostalgia for home. Aunty had asked whether he wanted to join her for Chuseok back in September, but he’d said he’d look after the shop while she went back with her nephew. It had been nearly seven years since Ben had been home. 

“On the house,” he said as he passed the stranger a pack of incense Aunty had brought back from her trip. Aunty liked the idea of incense, and Ben enjoyed the smell, but he thought the stranger might have more use for it.  _ Ohakamairi _ , Ben thought. So, the stranger was at least part-Japanese. 

Ben bet the man didn’t even remember who he was, or had put any kind of importance on the fact that he’d given him a rose, back in spring, and here he was, filling in the man’s background like he was profiling him. 

“If you keep giving me stuff for free, your business will go bankrupt.”

The words were like they were from a dream, too good to be true. Ben shouldn’t have deluded himself, not even for a second. He felt himself address the man like he would have in a dream, and not like in the reality they really shared— “I guess you’ll have to find some way to pay me back.”

-

“Are you… uncomfortable with our relationship?” 

Ben shook his head. He felt Aunty’s eyes dig into his back, gleeful as she’d sent them on their way. There were going to an amusement park for their fifth date, and she had just ruined Ben’s life.

‘Ben!’ she had chastised, ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

Ben had never wanted to transform into an outcrop of moss so much until that moment. “This is Aunty,” he tried. “Aunty, this is my…” Suddenly, he had been faced with a whole new set of problems. Was he meant to label this relationship so soon? “Friend,” he had finished, lamely. 

“I don’t—” Ben closed his eyes. “I don’t know your name,” he admitted, feeling his face burn. Worst of all was that he couldn’t ever remember there being an exchange of names; somehow, they had skipped straight to the watching-fireworks-on-new-year’s-eve, and then the man was calling him  _ Ben _ , over and over, and they were going on dates, and it never seemed  _ polite  _ to say ‘hey I know we’ve been dating for a while now, but what was your name again?’ Ben had sunk as low as trying to sneak a peek at the man’s ID, but all he had had with his name on was the military-style surname-dot-initial. Sulu. H.

Ben could’ve called him Sulu, he supposed, but that might’ve brought up questions like:  _ why do you use my surname? Where did you learn my surname? What kind of boyfriend are you? _

He’d had to get really imaginative over the last few weeks as he slowly ran out of excuses for  _ not  _ saying the man’s name. “Hey, you” only worked so well the first few times, and Aunty was finding it excruciatingly funny to torture Ben in more and more elaborate ways. 

“Hikaru.” Hikaru had stopped in the middle of the street, keeping Ben from walking further, their fingers intertwined. “Hikaru Sulu. Are you saying I never introduced myself?”

_ Hikaru _ , Ben was thinking. He was caught up with his own mind and missed Hikaru’s question.

“I’m an idiot,” Hikaru said. “I didn’t even ask for yours, I just  _ read  _ it on your badge and then never  gave you the chance to ask mine— Ben,” he said, “I’m such an idiot, I’m sorry for making you worry.”

Ben shook his head, gladness flooding him. “Hikaru,” he said, mostly just to enjoy the sensation of saying it. Hikaru reacted to the name like sunshine on a flower, his smile overjoyed.

“While we’re on the topic of questions I’ve been meaning to ask? What sport do you play?”

Hikaru blinked, the non-sequitur strange for a second. “Fencing— I fence. I use a foil. French grip. ” 

“I have no idea what that means,” Ben said, “But fencing— that’s cool. Do you have competitions?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll come watch, next time. Are you good?”

Hikaru’s grin was cocky and crooked. “You bet I am.”

-

Hikaru, it turned out, hated roller coasters. Ben found this out as they sat at the top of the theme-park’s highest ride. “But you want to be a pilot!” Ben cried over the scream of wind. Hikaru’s eyes were screwed shut, his face an incredible white. He had begun to breathe irregularly, and there was only so much Ben could do but put a comforting hand on Hikaru’s knee. 

“That’s different,” Hikaru was saying, his whispered words barely audible, “I’m in control, then. I know when it’s going to stop, I know I can move if I want, I know—” 

“Did you know I have tattoos?” Ben asked over the top of Hikaru. At Hikaru’s slight twitching of the brow, Ben continued. It was the only thing he could think of as a distraction. “I have three. If you can guess what I have, where, I’ll get you a present.” 

Ben could only hope it had worked, as they were dropped several hundred metres without warning, taking them through pitch black caverns and spun every which way like a penny in a washing-machine. 

“Shoulder,” was the first thing Hikaru said after they’d escaped the ride. “This one.” He tapped it. “A dragon.” His hand trailed down Ben’s back, then wrapped around the front. “Its tail curled around like you’re its treasure.”

Ben felt himself blush at the contact, and at the suggestion of something so  _ cool _ . “Wrong.” He brought Hikaru’s hand back up to the shoulder. “The place was right, but it’s a rose.” He dragged the hand slightly across, to the base of his neck. “Freesias.” Then, to his opposite arm, just above the hem of his t-shirt. He lifted it up, revealing a small star. “My first. I wanted to know how much it hurt.” 

His friends had made fun of the star, when he’d got it. After that, he’d not had the courage to get another, not until Aunty had made him realise it was about what  _ he  _ wanted, and not what anyone else thought. Freesias had been his grandpa’s favourite flower. The roses were just pretty. 

Hikaru was watching him, a considering look on his face. “I want to see them.”

“What, now?” Ben asked, looking around the park like the police might arrest him for taking his shirt off.

“No, I thought, that might be— an invitation. To like. Your room.” 

“Oh,” Ben said, before truly grasping Hikaru’s meaning. “ _ Oh _ .” It was unfair that Hikaru could recover so quickly from hyperventilation, cocksure and  _ flirty _ and attractive and— 

-

The thrill of winning a tournament always made Hikaru buzz for days but until today, he’d never had boyfriend handing him a hand-made bouquet, kissing him, running fingers through the sides of his until-recently-helmeted, sweaty hair. 

He didn’t realise how nice it felt to be given flowers, or to spend an evening researching flower meanings because you had a dork of a boyfriend who didn’t just give you things without meaning.

He liked how his dorm-room friends made fun of him for turning their place into a flowershop in its own right, gifts from Ben hanging on every wall, most for Hikaru, but some for them, too, because Ben wanted to make a good impression on Hikaru’s friends.

He liked how his friends made fun of him when he hadn’t come back to his room for a couple of nights, because he liked wearing Ben’s t-shirts anyway, and he already had a spare toothbrush beside Ben’s in his bathroom.

He liked having an Aunty, and he liked to eat Ben’s cooking. He liked to watch Ben’s delicate fingers tying together loops of flowers while Hikaru was pretending to read at the shop’s counter. He liked to kiss Ben’s tattoos, and his chubby tummy. 

He set down his trophy and for once, it didn’t feel like he was trying to buy his mother’s good graces. Ben told him how proud he was, how well Hikaru had done, and it was about him, about the effort he’d put in the train, the bruises that even now, were beginning to purple. 

He was in love. He was happy. He wanted to fly.

-

“Damask!” Kim shouted, her kid voice contorting to an echo of another Hikaru was familiar with. “Damask it,” she was grumbling.

_ Bones _ , Hikaru thought, his daughter was turning into Bones. 

“Damask?” Hoshiko asked, sounding like she didn’t really want to know.

“It’s a type of rose,” Kim sighed, as if she were a world-weary, middle-aged doctor tasked with keeping a crew of self-sacrificial idiots alive. “It looks like a tutu.”

“Right. And what has this ‘damask’ done to offend you?”

“I’ve just realised that I won’t get to eat the songpyeon until we clean the house.” They were at the house of a distant relative of Ben’s, who was more than happy to have the family of the Federation’s best pilot around the celebrate Ben’s ancestors with them. 

Kim was sat on the shiny, dark wood floor, her legs splayed at odd angles as she looked about her, aghast. More than thirty relatives were on the estate, which made for a lot of mess. Kim ran her finger along the floorboards and assessed the dirt by rubbing her finger against her thumb. A look of distaste at the apparent dirt she had found. It made Hikaru laugh; her expression was an exact mimicry of Ben.

With a long-suffering sigh, Kim stood and headed towards the cupboard housing cleaning supplies. First she assessed the high-tech cleaning equipment that lay out the front, before diving in and fishing out a bucket. Then she found herself a rag.

“Papa,” she called from the kitchen. “Help.”

Hikaru stood from his cushion and went to find her, watching as she attempted to shove the bucket into the sink. “You want me to fill it with water?” he asked.

“Yeah. Not too hot, though, or I’ll burn my fingers.” 

He ran the water through his own fingers before filling the bucket. About halfway up, he asked if the water was hot enough, before flicking the drips from his fingers. She stood, outraged, water dripping from her nose, before jumping towards the tap, arms stretching as far as they could reach, hoping to catch some water for a revenge attack. 

Hikaru feigned a maniacal, evil-villain kind of laugh as he watched her, enjoying watching her struggle. Then he picked her up at the middle, allowed her to reach the tap and then let her press her wet hands all across his chest, then his face, leaving dark handprints on his shirt. 

She giggled as he did it, each handprint drawing out a noise of pain from Hikaru, as if he were being banished by a hero. His counter-attack was to tickle her, making her squirm in his arms as she laughed, twisting to escape his fingers and screaming at him to stop. So he did, pulling her up, still crying with laughter, and hugging her tight, which set off another bout of giggles. 

“Papa!” she said, out of breath, “The bucket!” 

Hikaru looked over her shoulder to find the water flowing out of the bucket, dangerously close to overfilling the sink. “Good call,” he confirmed as he reached for the tap, tightening it. 

He set her down and lifted the bucket. “Where to, Captain Sulu?”

Kim set her shoulders and marched off down the hallway. “Follow, me, Lieutenant Sulu!” She stopped at the end of a hallway and pointed to a spot, where Hikaru placed the bucket. She pulled out her rag, dipped it in the water, squeezed it to get rid of the excess, got on her hands and feet and ran down the hall, wiping in one clean motion. At the end of the corridor she stopped, turned, and ran back down. 

“Papa,” she said, noticing his presence. “You and Daddy can start cooking the songpyeon now.” 

“You don’t need any help here?” Hikaru asked, watching as she did another circuit.

“Nope!” Kim looked at the bucket. “Maybe. I’ll ask you to move the bucket when I want to go to the next hall, okay?”

“Okay,” Hikaru confirmed. He saluted, which she mimicked before going back to work. 

Having most likely heard her, Hikaru found Ben in the kitchen, taking out the pine, ready for the steaming. The three of them had made the songpyeon that morning with the rest of the family, chatting in a circle as they formed the crescent-moons out of rice-flour. 

Even Hikaru’s parents had been dragged into the activity. Hikaru couldn’t remember a time where he’d seen his father’s fingers not immaculate, nor his mother looking so enthusiastic in crafting. He could admit it had been nice.

He wrapped his arms around Ben from the back, deciding to risk his Captain discovering his betraying orders to be a useless husband. Ben was always really warm, and somehow still smelled like freshly-clipped plants despite being four-days away from the shop.

“I’m glad we came.” 

He felt Ben nod. “Good,” he said softly. “Me too.” 

-

Hikaru volunteered to drive them the two-hour journey to Ben’s parents’ burial mounds, which Ben had been very vocal about being a bad idea. “Nonsense!” the family had cried, “Let the pilot drive!”

Driving was a lot different to being a pilot, Hikaru had told him once, right before stalling at a t-junction. Ben had never let Hikaru drive, after that. Which meant, he considered announcing, not only were they allowing the worst driver in human history behind the wheel, they were also doing it after Hikaru hadn’t driven for a decade. 

Hikaru had a way of making a face that was a half-grin, half-grimace, shrugging and slowly raising an eyebrow as if to say ‘I mean, we’re not dead, right?’ and that was the expression on his face the entire way there. They arrived alive, at least, though in significant need of a rest. 

But first came the half-hour hike up the mountain, followed by the cleaning of the graves. Then offerings of food and drink to the ancestors. Finally, it was time to eat.

As expected, Kim’s hands went straight for the songpyeon, grabbing three from the tub marked ‘goguma’. Ready to berate he greediness, Hikaru opened his mouth, only to have one of the sweets stuffed in, and small fingers clicking his jaw shut. Hikaru watched as Ben got the same treatment. 

“Is it good?” Kim asked, genuine concern on her face. 

Hikaru chewed and did not need to fake the bliss on his face as he nodded. They were amazing. 

Kim let out a deep sigh of relief before stuffing her own in her mouth and letting out a high-pitched noise of delight. “So good!” she said around her mouthful. “I was worried that Papa’s first chuseok with us would go wrong, and my songpyeon would taste bad, but,” she finished the sweet and grabbed another handful. “It’s good!” She then turned her attention to her grandparents, who were hesitating, unused to picnics. “Ahhh,” she said, indicating her mouth with one empty finger. 

Yoshiko opened her mouth, at first unsure. Then she opened wider, letting Kim deposit one of her songpyeon in her mouth. Hosato copied, seconds later. Hikaru watched his parents eat with a strange sense of anticipation, but he recognised the moment they chewed through to the centre, the filling of honeyed sweet-potato released from the pine-y rice outer shell. 

They were surprised at how good it tasted, how natural. Sweet, but not sickly so. A smooth texture. 

“Good?” Kim asked, standing over them.

“Good,” Hikaru’s parents confirmed in sync, allowing themselves what was perhaps the first genuine smile of the holiday.  

“Phew,” Kim said, sitting down in Hikaru’s lap and draping herself over him like a jellyfish. “I’m beat!” She made a grabby-hand at Ben. “Daddy, feed me. I want gamjajeon and japchae and some of the gimbap Auntie Seuk made.” 

Ben got to work feeding their Captain, occasionally waylaid by an ambush from Hikaru, who would steal the food from the chopsticks intended for Kim. Eventually it became a one-for-me, one-for-you deal, Ben taking it in turns to feed first his daughter, then his husband. 

-

On the way back to Yorktown, Hikaru thought about Captain Kirk. It was no secret that Bones had organised the extravagant birthday party because of Kirk’s father, because he had died one year younger than his son had turned.

He thought about the Enterprise, and about Kim, about his mission, and about his orders. He thought about Kirk’s upbringing; his bereaved mother, his rebellious resentment of the world for taking his father.

When Krall’s ship had been headed towards Yorktown, Hikaru would have done anything to stop the death of his husband and his daughter. How long, he thought, did Kim have to enjoy weeks like they had just had together? How long until he was the last to abandon ship, his courage the only thing saving his crew?

Jim Kirk was not the only one living under his father’s shadow, Hikaru decided. 

But then again, Hikaru thought, Kirk probably knew that, too. He probably knew that Hikaru would disobey orders to save Ben, would be the last to abandon ship to save Kim. The Captain probably watched Kim jump on Hikaru in the airport with a quiet sense of self-achievement. One more reunion at an airport was another he’d enabled. By being the Captain he was, keeping Hikaru from the Captain’s seat, Kirk kept Kim’s childhood safe, something his father hadn’t been able to do. 

Kirk had let Hikaru live long enough to see his mother laugh at his daughter’s impressions of frogs. Maybe next year, he thought, he’d invite Kirk to join them. It would be Kirk’s first chuseok with family. He smiled. He’d make damn sure he brought everyone home safely. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm Japanese, not Korean, and though I enjoyed writing an Asian upbringing for the Sulus, this fic was written with a liberal amount of google searches. Please let me know if anything's stupid.
> 
> Kim's school is based on this one: https://www.ted.com/talks/takaharu_tezuka_the_best_kindergarten_you_ve_ever_seen/transcript?language=en
> 
> Fencing advice was from @versus-a-blank-paper:   
> http://ninjaninaiii.tumblr.com/post/148140701473
> 
> Ben's tattoos were based on:   
> https://www.tattoofilter.com/p/2358 and http://tattoofilter.tumblr.com/post/125841026929 
> 
> Hikaru's half-grimace, half-grin eye-brow wiggle:   
> http://imgur.com/a/t2Iii


End file.
